10 Best Practices for Marketing Socially Responsible Businesses

Marketing a CSR initiative or enterprise takes as much strategic know-how as launching one. Following are 10 tips and tricks:

1. Don’t fear marketing: use marketing as a core business strategy.
2. Know yourself: Build upon your mission and you will attract like-minded customers.
3. What is your definition of success? Define your goals and stick to them or deliberately shift them.
4. Know your audience: Be aggressively customer centered.
5. Question conventional wisdom: Don’t limit your market to the “usual suspects.”
6. What’s driving the customer decision? Communicate your value and values.
7. Emotion trumps data: Connect with the heart first and mind second.
8. Build a community: Empower people as messengers.
9. Walk the talk: Be authentic and transparent.
10. Use the power of your voice to change the world: Leverage your marketing for social impact.

These tips are excerpted from PR News upcoming Guide to Best Practices in Corporate Social Responsibility and Green PR, Volume 3. They were written by Eric Friedenwald-Fishman, president and creative director of Metropolitan Group and Chip Conley, founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality. To find out more information about the guidebook or how to order it, go to www.prnewsonline.com/store.

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